Friday, March 17, 2017

Defenders of The Last Stand Quick Review

Defenders of The Last Stand by 8th Summit Games is a pure co-op board game for 1-5 players. Set in the post-apocalypse wasteland of the near future, players must defeat four Overlords and their marauding groups of raiders/mutants/bad guys and save the city of Last Stand.

The designer, Richard Launius of Arkham Horror fame, also did Defenders of the Realm. A high fantasy version with similar gameplay but withwith orcs, demons, and dragons. Last Stand adds some new features which expand gameplay greatly. Both games have a sort of Pandemic gameplay mechanics feel to them. Which is a good thing.

Play is fast and fun, with many action options per turn. Go on a mission? Scavenge some lost items? Fight some the minions? Or if your group has gained enough items/cards, you can take on one of the four Overlords.

Three of the four Overlords make steady progress towards Last Stand. The mutant lord know as "Puke" flies around randomly, spawning new Abominations. All are dangerous and have to be stopped. Each time a Overlord is defeated the game ramps up the difficulty. Once all four are killed, Last Stand is safe and the players win. If any Overlord reaches your city you lose. If too many minions are on the the map, or in Last Stand, you lose. If too many raider bases get built, you lose.
Nobody said the apocalypse would be easy.

There are some fun artifacts to find and side missions to go on. There is an "Adventure" spot the moves around the map that can be sought after. Some areas are teaming with radiation, and if you hang out there you may wind up with a mutation. Most are good, a few are bad, but if you get more than five points of radiation, your character becomes an enemy Abomination. Fun stuff.

There are a few minor downsides to this game: The art is okay, the plastic figures are not great, and the rulebook could be clearer. However, after starting one game, we got the hang of it pretty quick.

On the plus sides, the theme is great, lots of things to do, and it plays quickly. I prefer this over Defenders of the Realm (which I like a lot). It feels like this game is kind of under the radar being from a small publisher, which is too bad, because it is a whole lot of fun.

If you like your post-apocalypse Eighties B movie style, then this game is worth checking out.